He pondered this again while he changed his clothes and arranged his possessions in his new room. Through the open door he heard Peter walking about, flinging down his suitcases, moving chairs and tables. Peter too would not be too easy to look after, but what to do with Louise must be his first care. The thought of Chen came into his mind. If Chen should fall in love with Louise it would be excellent indeed. Certainly he must be careful that none of the doctors who were already married, some to old-fashioned wives whom they kept in the country, grew interested in Louise. There was much looseness in what was called modern society in Peking. Men and women came together and separated. They married and divorced with no more effort than a notice put in the newspapers. There was something about Louise that repelled him and made it hard for him to be affectionate with her in his old brotherly fashion. She looked young and yet experienced. Mary looked the virgin she was, and of the two, Louise now seemed older.
The four came together at their night meal, for they had reached Peking in the late afternoon. Now that the lamps were lit, the rooms looked softened and more homelike. When Young Wang had ordered Little Dog to bring in the dishes of hot food for him to arrange upon the table, they sat down with good appetite. Even Louise looked less sullen, although she was ready at once to complain.
“There are no closets in our rooms,” she said. “Where shall I hang my dresses?”
“I’ll have some built,” James said. “But if you wear Chinese things you won’t need anything but the shelves in the wall cupboard. Our ancestors kept their clothes folded.”
“I shall wear Chinese clothes entirely now,” Mary said.
“Not I,” Louise retorted.
“It’s quiet here,” Peter said suddenly. “You’d never know you were in a city.”
“That’s the beauty of the walls,” James said.
After the meal was over he had to go to the hospital. He had already been away his full week, and he wanted to see his patients, and though he was reluctant to leave the three, yet he must go. They were still at the table, cracking dried lichee nuts and drinking tea, when he rose and stood behind his chair. “If you need me Young Wang can come and fetch me,” he told them. “Tomorrow we will talk over everything and decide what each one is to do. You do not begin work until the first of the month, Mary. You ought to start college, Peter — classes opened last week. But perhaps you all want a few days in which to see the city.”
“We are not babies,” Mary said smiling. “We can look after ourselves. And don’t feel you have to apologize to us for China, Jim.”
He smiled back at her, thankful for her common sense. It was true that, quite without knowing it, he had been fearful lest they dislike everything here, because it was not what they were used to having in America. Mary with her shrewd eyes had understood his fears.
At the hospital he found Chen, in whose care he had left his sick. Chen had been zealous, but in spite of all his care of the patients, a woman had died. She had come into the hospital after birth with puerperal fever, as so many women came. She had seemed better when James left, but the fever had taken a turn for the worse, and she had died quickly the next day.
“Though I was with her, I could do nothing,” Chen mourned. “The fever ate her up. Now she leaves the newborn child. What shall we do with him?”
“Where is he now?” James asked.
“I have him in the children’s ward but he cannot stay there too long — you know how crowded it is, and the nurses are impatient with too many crying at once.”
“I will have my sister Mary come over tomorrow,” James said.
They went the rounds together and Rose and Marie pattered after them. These two nurses had attached themselves to the two doctors whom they liked best and with Kitty, who was a relief nurse, these made a solid core of five in the hospital. They took no part in the social life of the other doctors and nurses and maintained a rigid front toward gossip and love affairs. Had there been only Rose and Marie, this gossip would have reached them and they would have been accused of living with the two doctors they now followed. But the three nurses together made such gossip impossible.
His other patients were not dangerously ill and when the rounds were over James was loath to part from Chen. He wanted to talk with him. At least he wanted to get on terms of being able to talk with him and even to get his advice, perhaps, about Louise. He would not of course tell even Chen what had really happened. He would merely say that the girl was in the midst of an unhappy love affair, unhappy because her love was not returned, and that it was necessary to take her mind away from her own trouble. But before he said anything Chen must meet Louise. “Come home with me, Chen,” he said abruptly. “You are the first one I wish them to meet.”
Chen blushed savagely. “I never know how to talk to young women,” he mumbled, “especially ones who have just come from America.”
“Oh, come,” James urged. “You will find my sisters very easy. Louise is supposed to be quite pretty and she talks readily enough to any man. She’ll help you.”
After a little more reluctance which James saw only covered Chen’s curiosity and real desire to come, the two set off on foot through the quiet streets. The hutung was very neat and in a few minutes they had reached it. He pushed open the door and was delighted at what he saw. Peter and his sisters were sitting in the large central court under the light of three paper lanterns which Young Wang had strung to the great pine tree. Little Dog had brought out a teapot and some chairs, and Young Wang was squatting on his heels playing a flute. It was just as he would have liked Chen to see them. He was pleased that Louise sat most clearly in the light and that she looked soft and very pretty. He glanced at Chen and saw his gaze already turned to her. He introduced them quickly.
“Liu Chen, my elder sister Mary, my younger sister Louise, my brother Peter. Liu Chen is my best friend, as I have told you, and now let us call each other by our first names. Chen be at home here.”
Little Dog ran to fetch more chairs and his mother fetched bowls and some small cakes and a dish of watermelon seeds and Young Wang retiring behind the pine tree continued to play softly his gently winding airs. It was very pleasant. In a little while they were laughing, for not one of them except Chen could crack watermelon seeds properly, and he was compelled to teach them. It was the first time that James had seen Louise laugh since he had met her in Shanghai. Now with a fat black seed between her white teeth she opened her red lips to show Chen that she could crack it, and Chen began to tell her how to do it. But she was laughing so much she could not.
By the time the evening was over they were all gay, for Chen revealed that he knew sleight of hand. “I had an uncle who was a traveling juggler,” he confessed. “You see, the lane cannot support everybody, and since we were not scholars, we had to work. But my uncle would not work, and since he had long thin hands without any bones, my grandfather feared he might become a pickpocket and disgrace an honest family. Se he apprenticed him to a juggler, and my uncle grew very clever.”
Young Wang stopped his flute playing, and he sat on the outside of the circle on a piece of broken brick, and behind him stood Little Dog and his mother, and they all watched Liu Chen and laughed continually at what he could do. He took bowls of water out of the air and he swallowed lighted cigarettes and made Louise’s earrings disappear.
When all had laughed until they were weary, and the moon was high in the sky Chen slapped his knees. “It is nearly midnight and Jim and I must go early to work.” He rose and tightened the girdle which he wore always about his waist instead of a belt.